THE LANGUAGE OF THE LIVING SAC (Reading the Bile of Chicken and Pig Among the i-Besao)
THE LANGUAGE OF THE LIVING SAC(Reading the Bile of Chicken and Pig Among the i-Besao)
A Cultural Essay on an Ancient and Living Tradition
“The bile sac is not merely an organ. It is an answer to a question that no human tongue alone is wise enough to ask.”
I. Before the Knife Falls
High in the western folds of Mountain Province, where the clouds press so low in the morning they seem to graze the rooftops of cogon-thatched houses, the people of Besao have long understood something about the universe that modernity struggles to articulate- that the boundary between the visible and the invisible is thin, permeable, and constantly in conversation. The terraced slopes that descend from their villages like staircases carved for giants are not merely fields. They are covenants. And every covenant, the i-Besao know, requires consultation.
It can be performed at the host's house, dap-ay, or anywhere within the place of occasion.
It is in this spirit, literally and philosophically, that the practice of reading the bile of a slaughtered chicken or pig has endured for generations. To the uninitiated outsider, the image can seem jarring, perhaps even primitive- an elder or a seasoned community reader crouching over a freshly opened animal, lifting a small, glistening sac between practiced fingers, tilting it toward the light, reading its color, its fullness, its size, its very shape. Yet to understand this act as mere superstition is to miss everything. It is, in fact, a profound technology of community discernment, a form of sacred inquiry conducted with the body of a creature offered freely to the spirits of the ancestors and the namarsua, Kabunyan or God.
This essay traces the roots and the reason of that practice, the logic of why the pig and the chicken serve as its instruments, the significance of gender and parenthood in the choice of animal, the grammar of color, the question of whether the tradition is rational or merely reasonable, and finally, whether Scripture itself, that other ancient library of divine communication, harbors echoes of something remarkably similar.
II. Born of Necessity
Long before the arrival of the Spanish friars in the Philippines, and long before the first school was built in the valley below, the people of the Cordillera were already sophisticated readers, not of paper but of the world around them. They read the flight of birds, the direction of wind off the Chico River valley, the behavior of omens at the crossroads of a journey. This was not ignorance dressed in ceremony. It was empirical observation layered over millennia of lived consequence, crystallized into ritual.
The i-Besao and i-Sagada, as the Northern Applai inhabitants of the Kankanaey, inhabited a universe thoroughly alive with agency. The anito, the spirits of departed ancestors, did not simply vanish into the afterlife; they remained present in the rocks, the caves, the thickets of the village edge. The nature spirits, meanwhile, dwelled in the mountains and rivers and were considerably less predictable than the ancestor spirits, who were considered generally benevolent if properly remembered. When a family failed to invite the ancestor spirits to a gathering, when the dead were neglected in their hunger or cold, sickness would follow. Illness was not merely biological; it was relational.
And so the question the community perpetually faced was not simply what to do, but whether the invisible world would permit it. Before a journey. Before a marriage. Before planting season. Before a healing feast. Before the construction of a house. Before almost any significant undertaking, a question had to be put to the spirit world, and the spirit world had to answer in a language accessible to those who remained in the flesh.
The bile of a slaughtered animal became that language. The practice, called pidis, pidisan, i-pidis or i-pidisan among the Northern Kankanaey of Besao and Sagada, refers specifically to the inspection of the bile sac or apdo after the animal has been opened. The reader, historically a knowledgeable elder or experienced community elder, would examine the bile sac in its condition after sacrifice, reading its size, its fullness, its color, its position relative to the liver, and any unusual markings. The bile, in this understanding, was not a biological byproduct; it was a message from the spirits that arrived precisely at the moment of sacrifice, encoded in tissue and fluid.
The Northern Kankanaey of Besao and Sagada are remarkable in one additional respect- unlike their Ibaloy neighbors to the south, who have formally ordained priests called mambunong to officiate ceremonies, the Northern Kankanaey tradition holds that any experienced elder may conduct the prayers from memory and perform the pidis. The practice, in other words, was not locked behind religious hierarchy. It was community property, held in the collective wisdom of those the village recognized as having seen enough seasons to know.
III. Why the Pig, Why the Chicken (Animals at the Threshold)
One of the most natural questions a newcomer to this tradition asks is also one of the most revealing- why these two animals and not others? The Cordilleran world is rich with living things, yet the pig and the chicken occupy a singular ritual position across virtually every ethnic group in the region, including the Bontoc, the Ibaloy, the Ifugao, and the Northern Kankanaey of Besao. The answer lies at the intersection of ecology, theology, and biology.
The chicken and the pig were, for centuries, the two animals most intimately woven into the fabric of daily highland life. The carabao was too precious and too tied to agricultural labor to sacrifice often or lightly; it was reserved for weddings of the highest social standing. The dog, though occasionally offered in ceremonies connected with headhunting, used in daw-es or cleansing, was not a primary sacrificial animal in most community rituals. But the chicken and the pig were omnipresent, domesticated, living within or immediately adjacent to the household. They were, in a very real sense, members of the extended family of the longhouse.
This proximity made them natural mediators. In many Cordilleran and broader Philippine indigenous cosmologies, the creature that stands at the boundary of the human world and the wild world is considered a reliable messenger precisely because it inhabits both. The pig roots in the earth, moves between the domestic and the feral, and produces a liver and bile sac of a size generous enough to read with clarity. The chicken, meanwhile, is killed through pinikpikan sub-ritual, and its smaller bile sac offers a quicker reading for simpler consultations, such as whether a traveler may safely depart that morning or whether a household ritual has been accepted by the spirits.
There is also a biological logic the elders would not phrase in those terms but which underlies the practice with uncanny consistency- the bile sac of a healthy, well-fed animal at the moment of sacrifice is visibly plump, deeply colored, and cleanly defined. The bile sac of an animal that was already stressed, ill, or metabolically disturbed will present differently, often pale, shrunken, or abnormally shaped. What the elder reads as a spiritual message is also, in a real sense, a health report on the animal and, by extension, an index of the community's own biological and agricultural condition. In times of plenty, healthy animals produce healthy omens. In times of scarcity or disease, the message changes.
This does not reduce the practice to mere veterinary inspection. It deepens it. The spirits, in this worldview, communicate through the living conditions of the world itself; a sickly animal in a struggling community is not incidental. It is the cosmos speaking through consistent channels.
IV. The Deeper Grammar (Sex, Parenthood, and the Logic of the Offering
Perhaps the most layered and least understood dimension of the bile-reading tradition, even among those who have witnessed it, is the question of which specific animal is chosen for a given occasion. It is not enough to say that a pig or a chicken will be offered. The elder, consulting memory and community precedent, must also decide- male or female, and crucially, has this creature already borne offspring, or has it not yet brought life into the world?
This is not fastidiousness. It is a coherent theology of purpose, expressed through the body of the animal being given.
The most widely attested principle across Kankanaey and broader Igorot ritual practice is this- a male animal is the instrument of expulsion, while a female animal is the instrument of preservation. When the elder reads the bile and finds a bad omen, when the apdo is nearly empty, pale, shriveled and barely visible against the liver, the community does not stop at simply acknowledging the warning. It acts. The appropriate response is the sumang, a secondary or corrective offering in which a male animal, a boar or a rooster, is butchered. The male, in this symbolic order, carries the misfortune out and away; he confronts it, as a boar confronts a predator, as a rooster steps forward to shield the flock. The bad omen, having been named through the first reading, is now escorted out of the community’s sphere through the sacrifice of a creature whose very nature is understood as aggressive, outward-directed, and expulsive.
Conversely, when the bile reading yields a good omen, the sac full, richly colored and well-defined, the community may offer a female animal. A sow or a hen is offered not to repel but to hold, to keep the goodness gathered in, just as a hen draws her chicks beneath her wings and a sow nurses her litter through the cold of the mountain night. The female is the keeper. To sacrifice her in the presence of favorable omens is to ask the spirits to let the blessing stay, to seal it within the community’s life the way a mother’s body seals and sustains what has been entrusted to her.
Then comes the second and more subtle question- has the animal yet borne offspring, or is it still untouched by parenthood?
Among the i-Besao and the wider Kankanaey world, an animal that has already given birth carries a distinct spiritual valence. The sow who has farrowed, the hen who has hatched chicks, the female who has already poured her life-energy outward into the next generation, is understood as an animal whose generative work has been fulfilled. She has already given. She carries within her body the memory of abundance and the proof of fruitfulness. To offer such an animal in a rite intended to honor the fullness of the season, to give thanks for a harvest already realized, to seal a blessing that has already materialized, is profoundly appropriate. She mirrors the moment. The community is offering back from what it has already received, and the animal that has already given mirrors that completed cycle.
An animal that has not yet borne offspring occupies the opposite spiritual position. The gilt, the young sow who has never farrowed; the pullet, the hen who has never hatched a clutch, carries within her body a different kind of power- potential, undistributed, concentrated, and wholly intact. Her life-force has not yet been dispersed outward. She is, in the deepest sense of the word, a creature of pure future. To offer her is to place before the spirits something whole and uncommitted, a gift that has not yet been diluted by the claims of progeny. This kind of animal is considered especially appropriate for occasions of great seriousness or urgency, for rituals intended to avert calamity, to seek healing for a gravely ill person, to open a new field or begin a major undertaking, or to petition the spirits in moments when the stakes are highest and the community’s need most acute.
The logic, stated plainly, is this- when you are asking for something enormous, you give something enormous. An animal that has never given its life-potential to the world is giving it entirely, for the first time, to the spirits. The gift is concentrated, undivided, and carries the full weight of what might have been. This is the highland equivalent of what many sacred traditions call a first-fruits offering, the portion that has not yet been spent on ordinary purposes, reserved precisely because it is unadulterated.
The male animal that has sired offspring follows a parallel logic. The boar or the rooster who has already proven his generative power, who has already released his potency into the world through offspring, is understood to have a different spiritual weight than one who has not. For certain corrective or purifying rituals, the proven male is preferred because his sacrifice carries the authority of one who has already demonstrated his capacity to sustain life; he is not a promise but a record. For other rituals, particularly those that seek to expel a specific threat or confront a particular spirit-related disorder, the young and unproven male is chosen because his energy is undivided, fierce, and wholly his own.
Regardless, if you are sacrificing a farrowed pig or mother hen for good luck, be sure the bile is protruding and visible (delway) when you lift it. If you are sacrificing for safety or protection from sickness of bad luck, the bile must be concealed (simlet) when you lift the bile.
What emerges from all of this is not a simple binary of good and bad animals but a rich and flexible liturgical vocabulary. The elder selecting the offering is doing something far more sophisticated than choosing the nearest pig- he is composing a ritual sentence in a language whose grammar includes sex, size, position, reproductive history, color, and species, each word chosen because it carries precise meaning in the dialogue between the human community, family, individual and the spirit world.
V. The Color Question (Black Feathers, White Skin, and the Grammar of Omens)
If sex and parenthood constitute the grammar of the offering, then color is its register, its tone of voice, a choice that adjusts the emotional and spiritual frequency of the communication. Among the Kankanaey and the wider Igorot communities, the selection of a black or white animal for a specific ritual is not arbitrary; it is an act of liturgical precision.
The general principle, deeply rooted across related Cordilleran traditions, is that black animals are calibrated for the more grave and somber rituals- those connected with death, with the cleansing of a site after tragedy, or with the appeasing of particularly dangerous or malevolent spirits. The color black, in the chromatic theology of the highlands, does not signify evil; it signifies gravity, depth, and the capacity to absorb or contain what is dark and heavy. A black chicken or a black pig offered in a daw-es or cleansing ritual is not a symbol of mourning in the Western sense; it is a spiritual instrument calibrated for serious work, chosen because its dark body can carry what needs to be carried away.
White animals, meanwhile, carry the opposite valence. White in many indigenous Cordilleran traditions speaks of purity, clarity, and favorable communication with the benevolent ancestor spirits. A white chicken offered before a journey is a clean instrument, uncluttered by heavy spiritual associations, its bile sac a clear surface on which the spirits may write their answer legibly. White is the color of openness, of a message that needs no decoding, of a spirit world that can approach without complication.
These color associations are not entirely uniform across every Besao barangay or every specific ritual occasion; local variation, family tradition, and the judgment of the presiding elder all modulate the specific application. But the underlying principle, that the physical characteristics of the animal are part of the spiritual message being sent, remains strikingly consistent. The elder is not merely selecting a convenient animal. He is composing, with feather and flesh, the precise statement he needs the spirits to hear.
VI. What the Sac Says (Shape, Size, Position, and the Ritual of Repetition)
If the fullness and color of the bile sac constitute the headline of the spirit world’s message, then the shape of the sac and its position relative to the surrounding liver constitute the fine print, the subordinate clauses, the qualifications and nuances that give the reading its full and specific meaning. Here the tradition reaches a level of sophistication that most outside observers never glimpse, because it requires not merely seeing the bile sac but reading its geometry, its size, its spatial relationship to the organ that houses it, and then interpreting that geometry in light of the specific purpose for which the sacrifice was offered.
The i-Besao tradition recognizes two primary configurations that carry the deepest significance- the sac that is small and tucked beneath the liver, sheltered and concealed from easy view; and the sac that is long, pronounced, and forward-facing, extending visibly beyond the liver’s edge and presenting itself openly to the light.
The small bile sac that lies hidden beneath the liver (simlet), pressed close and covered, speaks the language of concealment. To the elder’s eye and the community’s ear, this configuration communicates that the person or household for whom the sacrifice was offered is safe, protected, tucked away from public disgrace, guarded against the eyes and intentions of those who might wish harm. The spirit world is saying, in the spatial grammar of organ and tissue, that the subject of the ritual is hidden from negative forces just as the sac is hidden from direct sight. He or she will not be exposed. The shadow of shame or misfortune will pass overhead without finding purchase. This reading carries particular comfort for those who have come to the ritual burdened by fear of social humiliation, by anxiety about enemies or rivals, by dread of the kind of disgrace that in a small highland community can follow a person for a generation. The hidden bile is the spirits’ assurance- you will not be seen by what wants to harm you. These shall be accompanied by prayers of the ritual leader/s. If the small and concealed bile is not appropriate for purpose of the ritual, another animal may be sacrificed until the animal's bile is appropriate for the ritual's purpose.
The long bile sac that extends forward, uncovered and prominent (delway), presents an entirely different and more complex message, one that the elder must handle with care precisely because its meaning is double-edged. On one side of that edge is abundance- the sac that stretches long and full is a sac overflowing with potential, spilling beyond its confines, impossible to contain. It speaks of productivity, of harvests that exceed the granary, of families that grow and expand, of endeavors that produce beyond what was asked. There is a generosity in the long bile, a sense that the spirits are not rationing their blessing but pouring it out beyond the vessel prepared to receive it.
On the other side of that same edge, however, is exposure. The bile sac that cannot hide, that extends beyond the liver’s shelter and presents itself openly, is also a sac that is visible to everything, including what is dangerous. In a world where the spirit realm contains both benevolent ancestors and malevolent forces, visibility is not always safety. To be seen by the wrong eyes is to be vulnerable. The long, prominent bile can therefore also be read as a warning that the person or undertaking in question is open to scrutiny or negativities, susceptible to the attentions of (apos) jealousy, gossip, spirit-affliction, disgrace, or misfortune that targets precisely those who shine too brightly. Abundance draws hunger. Productivity attracts envy. The spirits are communicating not only what will be given but also what must be guarded.
The elder’s wisdom lies precisely in this interpretive moment- distinguishing, in light of the specific purpose of the ritual, which side of the long bile’s double meaning the spirits are emphasizing. A sacrifice offered for a planting season reads the long bile primarily as abundance; the community prepares for fruitfulness and gives thanks in advance. A sacrifice offered for a traveler about to undertake a long journey reads the very same configuration as a warning to exercise caution, to move carefully, to avoid unnecessary visibility along the road. The shape of the sac is constant; the meaning shifts with the question that was brought to the altar.
This interpretive flexibility brings the tradition to its most dramatic and least-known feature: the practice of repetition when the bile’s message aligns positively with the purpose of the ritual.
When the elder lifts the bile sac and finds that its condition, whether hidden and protective or long and abundant, corresponds precisely and favorably to the stated intention of the sacrifice or not, the community, family, or individual may request or agree for another sacrifice and reading of bile.
There is a deep pastoral intelligence in this practice. The repetition provides the community, family or individual with a built-in check against wishful reading or not the right bile. An elder who is under social pressure to produce a favorable omen for a powerful family cannot simply declare the first bile good and move on; a second or third or fourth sacrifice must confirm or conform to the purpose. If the second reading contradicts the first, the requester knows the message is certain, and the appropriate response is humility rather than presumption. The ritual of repetition is, among its other functions, a mechanism of accountability, a built-in to demand or appeal for result that keeps the practice earnestly and honestly supplicatory.
Taken together, the full grammar of the pidis emerges with remarkable completeness- the species of the animal determines the depth and scale of the consultation; the sex orientation and reproductive history of the animal tunes the offering to the specific intention of the ritual; the color calibrates the spiritual register of the communication; the fullness of the bile sac delivers the primary message of favorable or unfavorable; the shape, size, and position of the sac nuances that message with the qualities of hiddenness or exposure, safety or abundance, protection or caution; and the repetition of the ritual, when the message and the purpose align, seals the communication as a confirmed and covenantal word. Each element is a dimension of a single, coherent act of listening.
VII. Is This Rational? The Question the Modern Mind Cannot Stop Asking
Here is where the essay must be honest, because the question of rationality is not merely academic; it is the question that every i-Besao Christian, every university-educated grandchild of a Besao elder, every anthropologist who has sat at a dap-ay fire and watched the elder lift the bile sac toward the light, must sooner or later confront.
The straightforward answer is this- within the internal logic of the Northern Kankanaey worldview, the practice is entirely rational. Rationality is not a synonym for materialism; it simply means that conclusions follow coherently from premises. If the premises include the existence of ancestor spirits who actively communicate through the physical world, the reliability of the bile sac as a divinely available medium, and the authority of accumulated generational wisdom in reading that medium, then the practice follows with perfect logical consistency.
The harder question is whether the premises are justified, and here we enter territory that neither science nor theology alone can resolve. What science can say is this- the bile sac of a healthy animal and the bile sac of an unhealthy animal are observably different, genuine biological markers refined by generations of observation. What science cannot say is whether the patterns carry meaning beyond the biological. Whether the fullness of a bile sac at the moment of sacrifice is also a communication from the spiritual world is a question that sits outside the jurisdiction of empirical method. It is a theological question.
What we can say without qualification is this- the practice is reasonable. It emerged from genuine necessity, was refined by generations of communal observation, and served the critical social function of giving a community a shared framework for major decisions. In a world without written records, without institutional governance, the bile reading was the community’s board meeting, its environmental assessment, and its prayer all at once. To dismiss it as irrational is not only intellectually lazy; it is historically ignorant.
VIII. Echoes in Scripture
And now we arrive at the most surprising section of this essay, at least for those who assumed the story of bile reading belongs entirely to the realm of indigenous practice uncontacted by Scripture. It does not. The Bible, read carefully and without the truncating lens of colonial theology, contains multiple and explicit references to exactly this tradition.
The clearest of these appears in the book of Ezekiel, chapter twenty-one and verse twenty-one, where the prophet describes the king of Babylon deliberating over his military campaign. The text records that the king stood at the fork of two roads to use divination, shook arrows, consulted the household gods, and inspected the liver. Scholars of the ancient Near East confirm that this refers directly to the practice known in academic circles as haruspicy or extispicy, the reading of the entrails of sacrificed animals, most commonly the liver and the bile sac.
Babylonian priests produced clay models of sheep livers mapped into sections, each representing a different deity, as training manuals for the readers of organs. The practice spread from the Babylonians to the Hittites, to the Etruscans, to Rome. A Babylonian text known as the Barûtu, the Art of the Diviner, filled one hundred and thirty-five clay tablets with detailed instructions for reading the liver and its associated organs. The philosophical premise underlying Mesopotamian haruspicy and the Northern Kankanaey pidis is strikingly similar- the gods communicate their will through the organs of sacrificial animals at the moment of offering.
But the parallel that speaks most directly to the question of sex and offspring, the very dimension this essay has spent the most time examining, is one that most readers of the Bible pass over without a second thought- the red heifer of Numbers 19. God commands Moses and Aaron to instruct the people to bring a red heifer without defect, without blemish, and upon which no yoke had ever come. The Hebrew original makes the specificity unmistakable; this animal must never have been placed under a yoke, meaning it must never have been used for labor, and by strong traditional extension, never have been bred or set to any other practical purpose. It is an animal whose life-force remains wholly concentrated and wholly uncommitted.
This is precisely the principle the Besao elder applies when selecting an animal for a ritual of the highest gravity- choose the animal that has not yet given itself to the world, because its gift to the spirits will be total, undiluted, and freighted with everything it might have become. The red heifer’s requirement that she be unblemished and unyoked is not merely aesthetic or hygienic; it is a statement about the purity of concentrated potential. The i-Besao elder who insists on a young gilt that has never farrowed for a critical healing ritual is working within the same theological grammar, separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, but reading from the same page of the cosmos’s book.
The Hebrew Bible’s relationship to divination is complex. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, divination is prohibited for Israel precisely because it was so widespread among the surrounding nations; the concern was not that the practice was inherently absurd but that it represented a turn toward foreign spirit-consultation rather than toward the God of Israel. The prohibition implies the practice was real, understood, and tempting. In the priestly sacrificial system itself, the fat, liver, and kidneys of sacrificial animals are offered to God at the altar- the very organs the elder lifts for inspection are also the organs that rise as smoke before the LORD in Leviticus. The organ that the i-Besao elder reads as a message is the same organ that the Israelite priest offered as a gift. The theological intuition is the same- these interior parts of the creature are where life most concentrates, where the sacred may most legibly appear.
Christians among the i-Besao, and they are many, face a genuine tension here. The New Testament does not address haruspicy directly. And yet the pastoral question is not so easily resolved by simple prohibition. When an elder holds the bile sac of a chicken in the firelight of the dap-ay and asks, in his own language, whether the spirits accept this offering and consent to bless the occasion, he is performing an act of communal prayer, dressed in the clothing of his ancestors. The object may be biological, but the intention is theological. The conversation between the Gospel and indigenous culture is richer, more nuanced, and more theologically serious than the simple colonial answer of prohibition allowed.
IX. The Sac That Holds Everything
There is a small, ancient irony in the apdo, the bile sac. It is perhaps the most underrated organ in the body- routinely discarded in commercial butchery, noticed by physicians only when it becomes diseased, absent from the poetry of most cultures. And yet in the highlands of Besao, it has served for centuries as the community’s most reliable oracle, its most intimate interface with the spirit world, its smallest and most consequential text.
To read the bile is to participate in a tradition older than any living institution in the Philippines, older than the barangay system, older than the municipal government, older than the nation itself. It is a practice that shares deep structural kinship with the ancient Near East, with Mesopotamian temples, with Etruscan priests in bronze helmets, and with the Levitical altar fire. It is a practice born of necessity and refined by observation, governed by a sophisticated internal grammar of sex, reproductive history, color, and occasion, each element chosen with the care a poet gives to a word.
The elder who selects a white, never-yet-farrowed sow for a healing ritual is not performing an arbitrary tradition. He is saying something precise- this offering is clean, it is whole, it is everything that this animal would have been and now freely gives, and it is offered on behalf of someone who is not yet whole and needs to become so. Every choice of animal, in this light, is a sentence. Every bile reading is a reply. The conversation is ancient, earnest, and still very much alive.
Whether the i-Besao Christian reading this essay chooses to practice the pidis, to honor it as cultural memory, or to hold it at arm's length as a matter of faith is not for this essay to determine. What this essay insists upon is that the practice deserves the same intellectual respect we extend to any serious engagement with questions of meaning, community, and the sacred. The i-Besao elder who bends over the opened cavity of a pig and lifts the glistening apdo toward the Cordillera morning light is not practicing ignorance. He is practicing an ancient, earnest, and surprisingly universal form of listening.
And in a world where no one seems able to stop talking, perhaps that is the most radical thing of all.
Notes on Sources
This essay draws on the documented beliefs and practices of the Northern Kankanaey (Applai) of Besao and Sagada, Mountain Province, Philippines, as recorded in ethnographic sources including the Aswang Project's documentation of Northern Kankanaey religious beliefs and rituals; the Yodisphere and Studocu compilations of Kankanaey culture; the Agshan Online account of the Pakde ritual; the Igorot traditions blog on sumang and bile omen reading; the Northern Dispatch interview with Kankanaey elder Ama Tigan-o of Sagada; the Philippine News Agency's 2025 report on the mambunong tradition in Benguet; and the Cabiten cultural documentation of Kankanaey marriage and sacrifice rites. Biblical parallels draw on Ezekiel 21:21, Numbers 19:1-2 (the red heifer), and the academic literature on ancient Near Eastern haruspicy, including materials from Britannica, the PredictionX project on Mesopotamian divination, and scholarly work on Etruscan extispicy. The author also draws on community knowledge from engagement with i-Besao cultural informants.
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